Watchdog

In the first effort to measure the cost of Cook County’s error-ridden assessment system under Assessor Joseph Berrios, a new study estimates that at least $2.2 billion in property taxes was shifted from undervalued Chicago homes onto overvalued ones between 2011 and 2015. Because the county’s assessment...

Despite Illinois’ promise to reform troubled group homes for disabled adults, allegations of abuse and neglect have risen, staffing levels have fallen and state oversight has been sluggish, the Tribune has found. At the same time, some vulnerable adults who failed to thrive in group homes have...

Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios has been producing error-ridden property assessments that effectively punished poor homeowners while providing tax breaks to wealthy ones, according to a much-anticipated independent study of the county’s residential assessment practices. The study, which reviewed...

Well before the Trump administration began shifting responsibility for enforcing environmental laws to the states, Illinois already had slowed down the policing of air and water pollution under Gov. Bruce Rauner. A Tribune analysis of enforcement data shows that since the Republican businessman...

An independent study to gauge the fairness and accuracy of residential property tax assessments in Cook County was scheduled to be completed in mid-December, records show, but now its first findings may not be delivered until the end of February — days after early voting commences in an election...

Gov. Bruce Rauner’s executive order seeking to bar state lawmakers from representing clients before a board that hears property tax appeals is largely symbolic, state data suggest, revealing how limited the Republican governor’s options are for changing the system. Vowing to end what he called...

A top staffer for the Illinois Lottery failed to disclose her relationships and contact with lobbyists for a firm that was bidding for a massive contract to manage the lottery, a state investigation has found. The lack of disclosure led the state’s top contract officer to suspend the contract with...

More Watchdog reports

Another Illinois child has died of Krabbe disease, a condition that could have been treated if public health officials had followed through on a state law and screened her for it at birth. Lana Katherine Shelton, of North Riverside, was 18 months old when she died Monday. Lana's struggle with Krabbe...

Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios has never made any secret of his affinity for old-school politics that put a premium on loyalty and favors. That approach has served him well in the Cook County Democratic Party, where he's risen to chairman, and at the ballot box, where he's won two terms as...

A secretive appeals system has been knocking down the punishments of Chicago police officers no matter how serious their misconduct, undercutting the results of lengthy investigations and layers of review long after the public believes the cases were concluded. In the first examination of its kind,...

Ten years after lawmakers directed state officials to screen all newborns for a deadly disease, the Illinois Department of Public Health says it is poised to begin testing babies, making it possible for doctors to intervene with a lifesaving treatment. In a letter to hospitals, Public Health Director...

When Chicago's new police oversight agency opened in September, city officials pledged a different way of doing business: Misconduct investigations would be transparent and the public would learn the outcomes quickly. But even as the fledgling agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability,...

Brandon Whitehead dropped to his knees in the middle of the busy street, cars veering around him as an off-duty Chicago police officer aimed a handgun at him and his father. It was nearly midnight, and Walter Whitehead had been driving his 16-year-old home from his job as a cashier at Long John...

Speaking publicly for the first time about his department's decadelong failure to begin screening babies for a deadly disease, Illinois Public Health Director Nirav Shah told state lawmakers on Wednesday, "It's unacceptable and shameful that it's taken this long." With parents of dead or dying...

Hoping for better luck the second time around, state officials unveiled a deal Friday to put the fate of the Illinois Lottery in the hands of a British firm that pledges bigger returns than those generated under the manager the state fired. In a do-over of the nation’s first, controversial attempt...

Nine months pregnant, Natasha Spencer watched anxiously from her eighth-floor window as the abandoned cars and buses piled up on South Shore Drive. One of the worst blizzards in Chicago history gripped the city in the winter of 2011, and Spencer was past her due date. Her obstetrician had offered...

State lawmakers are requesting data on the caseloads of Department of Children and Family Services investigators following a recent Tribune investigation into mismanagement at the agency's understaffed Joliet office. A longstanding federal court consent decree known as "B.H." effectively prohibits...

For the first time a federal agency is moving to outlaw an entire class of toxic flame retardants, a policy change intended to protect Americans from chemicals linked to cancer, neurological deficits, hormone disruption and other health problems. The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted Wednesday...

Manufacturers long ago stopped adding a cancer-causing flame retardant to children's pajamas, but federal officials failed to ban the chemical during the late 1970s and as recently as five years ago it was the most widely used fire-resistant compound in household furniture. Scientists and health...

The state agency responsible for protecting the children in Semaj Crosby's home assigned unmanageable caseloads to investigators in its Joliet field office and allowed supervisors there to intimidate and mistreat workers, the Tribune has found. As allegations of child abuse poured in from the Joliet...

Eight years after Illinois approved a massive capital plan for university campuses in the state, half of the largest new projects at state schools never began construction and are now canceled or indefinitely halted. In all, the state put more than $14 million toward five major higher education...

Whimsically designed to suggest the gingerbread castle a child might build, the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center has earned national acclaim for its investigations of sex assault and abuse cases involving victims as young as a few months old. In the bright facility on South Damen Avenue, police...

A new report released Friday found ethical lapses and mistakes deemed "highly irresponsible" under the state's former child services director, George Sheldon, who favored a circle of associates he imported from Florida after he took over the Department of Children and Family Services. Executive...

Weeks after former state Department of Children and Family Services Director George Sheldon resigned and took a job with a Florida nonprofit, new details are emerging about insider contract deals and allegations of Sheldon and his top aide's mismanagement during his tenure at the scandal-tainted...

Telemarketer Safety Publications Inc. has agreed to cease operations in Illinois after the state's attorney general alleged the firm misled donors to raise millions of dollars on behalf of veterans and other charitable causes. Safety co-founder Arthur Olivera also signed a lifetime ban from raising...

The morning after 17-month-old Semaj Crosby was reported missing from her Joliet Township home, state Department of Children and Family Services investigators and supervisors went to a strip mall office three miles away and began filing reports. As police searched frantically for Semaj on April...

As state child welfare investigators probed allegations of abuse in the Joliet Township home where 17-month-old Semaj Crosby would later be found dead, their supervisor was launching a contest that awarded $100 gift cards to the two workers who closed the most cases in a month, according to agency...

A new report describes a litany of failures by state child welfare investigators who opened at least 10 investigations into abuse and neglect in the home of 17-month-old Semaj Crosby before her death in April. As investigators for the Department of Children and Family Services walked through the...

Illinois taxpayers have funded about $2 million in "retention" bonuses for employees of a private firm managing the lottery despite the firm performing so poorly Illinois is working to replace it. A Tribune investigation has found the state approved paying bonuses as part of a complicated deal...

Ending decades of denial and inaction, the federal government on Friday issued a tough new exposure standard for one of the most unusual and deadly occupational risks U.S. workers have ever faced: the toxic metal beryllium. Because of beryllium's remarkable properties — it is lighter than aluminum...

The director of the Illinois Lottery was dumbfounded. In June 2013, Michael Jones had just learned the firm hired to manage the lottery wanted to stop selling a scratch-off he considered the most popular new game in years. It had a catchy name — Birthday Surprise — and a creative grand prize: $150,000...

A decade after one of the most damaging scandals in Chicago police history broke, two of the officers accused of wrongdoing remain on desk duty at full pay, filing papers or answering phones as they await the outcome of the city's slow-moving and much-criticized disciplinary process. The two are...

In a new interview, Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade talked about how his family was torn up over the slaying of his cousin Nykea Aldridge and how presidential nominee Donald Trump's tweet about her death left a "bad taste" in his mouth. Aldridge, 32, was shot to death last Friday afternoon as she...

With rising public concern about the threat posed by lead pipes connecting thousands of Chicago homes to the public water supply, city officials announced Monday they will begin testing tap water on streets that face greater risks of exposure to the brain-damaging metal. The Chicago Department...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration routinely fights turning over information in federal civil rights lawsuits against Chicago police officers, often leaving a judge to step in and order the city to disclose potential evidence, a Tribune investigation has found. Although typically not the type...

A Tribune investigation of hundreds of complaints upheld by the Independent Police Review Authority shows the agency often gave victims of police abuse or misconduct a false sense that they had prevailed.

A Tribune analysis of state data has identified nearly 200 public water systems in Illinois -- serving more than 800,000 people in all -- where test results exceeded federal standards during at least one year since 2004.

Chicago officials boast of having the world's largest sewage treatment plant, but that also means the metropolitan area produces massive amounts of wastewater that pollutes rivers all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

During a spectacular debut season in Chicago, White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu wowed crowds with 36 home runs, a team record for a rookie. But what no one saw and few knew was that during those same few months he apparently was paying off a heavy debt to the people who helped him escape from...

While federal prosecutors have offered few details of the misconduct behind former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert's hush money payments, the Tribune has learned that at least four people have made credible allegations of sexual abuse against him.

In an ambitious effort to repair Illinois' beleaguered child welfare system, state officials have laid out a wide-ranging reform plan that includes extensive worker retraining, expanded access to mental health services and a substantial reduction in the number of juvenile wards in residential treatment...

A Chicago doctor who was once the nation's most prolific prescriber of the risky antipsychotic drug clozapine was sentenced to nine months in prison for taking cash, vacation trips and other kickbacks from the drug's manufacturers.

When DePaul University agreed to contribute $82 million toward the publicly funded McCormick Place Events Center, the private school positioned itself to gain more than just a $200 million new home for its basketball teams. DePaul also stands to recoup at least $34 million off naming rights, sponsorships...

Alarmed by lead hazards lingering in older buildings across the nation, lawmakers are pushing to overhaul federal policies that fail to protect children from exposure to the brain-damaging metal in taxpayer-subsidized housing. Prompted by a Tribune investigation, a group of Democratic lawmakers...

When Chicago officials tested household tap water for lead last year, they largely bypassed parts of the city that face greater risks of exposure to the brain-damaging metal, a Tribune analysis has found. Of the 50 homes tested, only three were on streets where the water main had been replaced...

Thirty-five members of Congress are questioning Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy about her agency's review of a controversial Dow Chemical Co. weedkiller that was the subject of a Chicago Tribune investigation last year. In a letter sent to McCarthy late last week, Democratic...